Has this ever happened to you? You get asked a question and think “I need to find the answer to that,” or you start a puzzle and just have to figure it out. It takes longer than you thought it would. Much longer. After hours dinking around trying to figure it out, you realize you just burned valuable time. It just wasn’t worth the amount of time you spent trying to figure it out.
Before you get stuck in this trap at work, ask yourself:
- Is figuring this out worth it?
- Am I the right person to figure it out?
- Would you pay the amount of money out of your own pocket that the time costs?
- If the right person is someone else, is it worth disrupting their efforts to figure it out?
- What is the real value to figuring it out?
- Can it lead to innovations in your business?
Sometimes figuring it out has significant value. Many times it doesn’t. How do you assess whether it is worth it to figure it out?